ABERDEEN, Md. (WJZ)?A bogus cancer diagnosis for one Harford County woman turns out to be an alleged scam. Now police are investigating.
Gigi Barnett explains most of the cash was collected at an elementary school.
Bakerfield Elementary in Aberdeen is closed for the holidays. But when school opens next week, one worker will face a fraud investigation.
The Harford County Sheriff?s Office says between January 2010 and this summer, the unidentified worker told other employees she had cancer.
Detectives say her co-workers stepped in to pay for her rent, groceries and plane tickets to treatment centers.
?They were doing things to help their co-worker who they believed was in need,? said Monica Worrell, Harford County Sheriff?s Office.
But this month, one of the co-workers became suspicious and turned to police.
In the police report, over the summer the woman told co-workers that cancer had progressed to stage four and spread to her lungs and that she had only a 15 percent chance of survival.
The co-workers sprung into action again. This time with a fundraiser collecting about $10,000.
?It was identified to the Sheriff?s Office from the victim that these type of activities were happening to help raise money for this co-worker that alleged she had cancer,? Worrell said.
?I am surprised but a?lot of people do a lot of things to get money nowadays,? said Angel Balentine, a former student at the Bakerfield.
Police are still?in the early stages of the investigation. As a result, no charges have been filed yet.
Police aren?t releasing the identity of the suspect because charges are pending.
Beyond the Arc: Georgetown's win over Louisville on Wednesday is the sort of thing we'll be seeing a lot of this season in the Big East, a league stocked with good teams, but no great ones beyond Syracuse.
Windows Phone 7 Crisis: 10 Ways Microsoft Can Fix It ( Page 1 of 2 )
Windows Phone 7 is in a state of crisis. At last tally, the operating system owned just 1.5 percent of the market, and its chief competitor, Android, had over half the worldwide market in its pocket. Meanwhile, handset vendors have been showing off Windows Phone 7-based products that have failed to match Apple?s iPhone. Through it all, Microsoft has waited patiently in the hopes that something would change.
But nothing has changed. The chances are the situation isn?t going to change unless the software giant starts making drastic moves to improve its position in the mobile space.
Improving its position in the mobile market might not be so easy. Windows Phone 7 is largely viewed as a joke by consumers, and even enterprise users have been loath to adopt the platform. It?s as if Microsoft has put its operating system into a corner, and it has done nothing to get it out.
Luckily for Microsoft, however, 2012 presents a fresh start for the company to try something new and put its platform into a better position to be successful. Read on to find out what Microsoft should do to address its Windows Phone 7 crisis.
1. Create a Nexus-like strategy
Google made the intelligent move to brand high-quality Android-based smartphones ?Nexus.? Although the company isn?t developing its own smartphones, Google is playing a role in the Nexus product development. That?s important. The Google brand is a big name, and it carries with it respect from consumers and enterprise users. Maybe Microsoft should develop its own ?Nexus? alternative with hardware vendors.
2. Start playing nice with carriers
Microsoft hasn?t been so nice to carriers over the last year. The company has pushed its software on device makers, told them how the hardware should operate and left carriers with all the risk of marketing those products. At what point will Microsoft realize that the sooner it acts to seriously help carriers the sooner it will see sales rise?
3. Give developers what they want
Developers are an integral piece of the puzzle for Windows Phone 7. If Microsoft can find a way to attract developers from Android to Windows Phone 7, the company can go a long way in improving the platform?s chances of success. Coaxing developers will mean offering better profit-sharing plans. Improving the Windows Phone 7 app ecosystem might even require Microsoft to acquire some developers. Microsoft has a huge amount of cash on-hand. It?s about time it starts using it to improve its position in apps.
4. Buy a handset maker
Aside from apps, Microsoft should also use its cash to start the process of acquiring a handset maker. Whether it?s RIM, Nokia, or any other company that might come along, Microsoft must drop a few billion dollars to buy a big name handset maker. It might ostracize other vendors, but if Google can do it with Motorola Mobility, why can?t Microsoft follow suit?
SAN DIEGO (AP) ? A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the U.S. government to pay $17.8 million to a family that lost four members when a Marine Corps fighter jet crashed into their San Diego home in 2008.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller's ruling came after a nonjury trial between the Department of Justice and the family, who sought $56 million for emotional and monetary loss.
Don Yoon lost his 36-year-old wife, Youngmi Lee Yoon; his 15-month-old daughter, Grace; his 2-month-old daughter, Rachel; and his 59-year-old mother-in-law, Seokim Kim Lee, who was visiting from Korea to help her eldest daughter take care of their children.
Yoon said in a statement that Miller's ruling was "thoughtful, reasoned and just." Yoon broke down crying throughout his testimony, which came three years to the day when he buried his wife and baby girls in the same casket. He told the judge he only looks forward to the day when he can join them.
"Our family is relieved this part of the process is over, but no sum of money will ever make up for the loss of our loved ones," he said.
The Marine Corps has said the plane suffered a mechanical failure but a series of bad decisions led the pilot ? a student ? to bypass a potentially safe landing at a coastal Navy base after his engine failed on Dec. 8, 2008. The pilot ejected and told investigators he screamed in horror as he watched the jet plow into the neighborhood, incinerating two homes.
The case was unique in that the government admitted liability but disputed how much should be paid to Yoon and his extended family. Government lawyers had put economic losses at about $1 million but left it up to Miller to decide how much should be paid for the loss of love and companionship.
Department of Justice attorneys offered their condolences during the trial but questioned how much the family members depended on each other. The law does not allow victims to be compensated for grief, suffering or punitive damages.
The judge said the deaths of the two girls deprived Yoon of "the comfort, companionship, society and love a young child is capable of providing to a new parent and, then, in later life. By all accounts, the Yoon girls would have been raised with traditional cultural and family values emphasizing love and devotion to parents and family."
He ordered Yoon to be awarded nearly $10 million, and his father-in-law to be given nearly $4 million. The rest should go to the father-in-law's three adult children for the loss of their mother, Seokim Kim Lee.
Miller called Seokim Kim Lee an "extraordinary woman whose profound and loving influence greatly molded, directly or indirectly, virtually every plaintiff in this case," after hearing the testimonies of her husband and children, who flew in from Korea to testify.
"And it's that remarkable influence which informs and helps to measure what fair and reasonable compensation should be awarded in this case," Miller said in his written ruling.
Government attorneys could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday.
During the trial, the family's attorney, Brian Panish, showed photographs and videos depicting a close-knit farming family whose lives were shattered on two continents by the crash. Youngmi Lee came to the United States in 2004 to marry Yoon.
Yoon said he harbors no ill will toward the Marine pilot "who did everything he could to prevent this tragedy," but added that his family believes "that misguided attempts by the military to save money and cut costs" contributed to the crash.
"If the cost of paying fair compensation as ordered by this court will be factored into the daily decisions by our military in its operations that affect both military and civilian safety," other families may be saved, the family's statement said.
The military disciplined 13 members of the Marines and the Navy for the errors.
In court filings, Panish noted a case in which San Diego Gas & Electric Co. awarded $55.6 million to the heirs of four U.S. Marines who died in a 2004 accident when their helicopters crashed into power lines at Camp Pendleton. Justice attorneys said during the trial that case was one of the highest claims awarded in California and did not fairly represent this kind of case.
TOKYO (AP) ? Japan's industrial output dropped last month ? with production, shipments and inventory figures all decreasing ? but government forecasters had manufacturing and production looking for a rebound this month and next, officials said Wednesday.
The unemployment rate adjusted for seasonal differences was unchanged in November from the previous month, at 4.5 percent, the government also announced.
Industrial output dropped a seasonally adjusted 2.6 percent in November, according to the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry. It was the first decline in two months.
It said industries contributing most to the decrease were transport equipment, information and communication electronics equipment and iron and steel. Large and small passenger cars and cellphones were among the commodities adding to the decline.
The ministry described the data as "flat," and said manufacturing and production were expected to increase 4.8 percent in December and to increase 3.4 percent in January
In other economic data announced Wednesday, the government said the core Consumer Price Index fell 0.2 percent in November from year-earlier figures, its second consecutive monthly fall. The index, which does not include fresh foods, was 99.6 against the 2010 base of 100.
Core CPI for Tokyo in December ? considered an indicator of future trends for the entire country ? fell 0.3 percent.
In recent years, Japan has wrestled with deflation, or falling prices, which can drag on economic growth.
The ratio of job offers to job seekers was 0.69 in November, an improvement from 0.67 the previous month.
Figures released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs said there were 2.80 million people unemployed in Japan in November.
Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, a Democrat, announced he would not seek re-election in 2012, making it even harder for Democrats to hang onto that Senate seat, in a heavily Republican state. NBC?s Lester Holt reports.
The Prince family received $225,000?not that much, as these things go, though the settlement spared them the time and expense of going to court. In exchange, the family agreed not to sue South Hadley again in any way connected to Phoebe?s death. They also agreed not to disclose the settlement?s terms. However, ?a representative of the South Hadley Public Schools? could communicate the information. This is a little mysterious, but it suggests that it was the school district or the insurance company, rather than the Prince family, which wanted the settlement to remain secret. In any case, the settlement also includes a gag order. Phoebe?s parents agreed that if the settlement became public, the only public comment they would give would be to say that ?the matter has been resolved.?
The nonprofit group CJA tracks down those who commit crimes in one country and flee to another ? and hauls them into court.
Last August, federal agents in Massachusetts arrested a man in his late 60s. The man, Inocente Montano, had lived quietly north of Boston since 2002. Then, in May, Mr. Montano, who had been a military officer in El Salvador in the 1980s, was indicted by a judge in Spain for his involvement in the 1989 killings of six Jesuit priests and two women during the civil war. Now Montano endures home detention, facing US immigration charges, held by one government and wanted by another.?
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American law enforcement has arrested hundreds of people like Montano ? foreign former military commanders or officials now living in the United States despite involvement abroad in torture, extrajudicial killings, or other serious human rights abuses. These hundreds are dwarfed by the survivors around the world who are themselves victims of such acts or are relatives of the abused or dead.
For many survivors it has been decades since they were harmed. They have been denied by politics or corruption any redress in their home countries. Their histories show that one consequence of war is that peace may offer no justice.
A small San Francisco-based nonprofit organization called the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) works to find a measure of justice ? and, just as importantly, truth ? for such victims.
??So often what happens in cases involving state-sanctioned violence is the state also hides any evidence,? says Pamela Merchant, the CJA?s director.? ?It?s hugely important for survivors to have their stories acknowledged at all.?
Montano was named in a 1993 United Nations report on human rights abuses during the Salvadoran war. It was the CJA that in 2008 first filed a criminal complaint in Spain for the Jesuits? killings (20 people were included in the May indictments).? It was the CJA that finally found Montano living outside Boston and publicized his past, leading to his arrest by US authorities for not disclosing his military career on his immigration applications.?
Yet much more of CJA?s work has focused on litigation in US courts to achieve civil judgments for clients from Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.?
?Most of our cases are civil litigation ? often we never see any money [from judgments]; it?s more about [having] your day in court and confronting the atrocity and the abuser, and having the opportunity to tell the truth,? Ms. Merchant says.
Along with pro bono counsel, the CJA (with just 10 employees) has won millions of dollars in judgments for its clients and has brought the importance of human rights to the attention of American politicians and news media.?
Even in victory, though, the CJA?s cases often depict a dismaying reality: After a war, peace, no matter how welcome, can fail to deliver justice and transparency.
In a 2008 result in Florida, the CJA won a $37 million judgment against a former army officer in Peru who led a 1985 massacre of villagers high in the Andes Mountains. The incident was one of the worst in the conflict between Peru and the Shining Path insurgents. The CJA?s clients, two women, then 12 years old, watched the officer and his men shoot their families and burn them alive. As many as 69 people were killed in what became known as the Accomarca Massacre.?
HONOLULU ? Austin Davis threw two touchdowns, including a 4-yarder late in the game, and No. 22 Southern Mississippi earned a school-record 12th victory by holding off Nevada 24-17 in the Hawaii Bowl on Saturday night.
Davis overcame a shaky start for the Conference USA champion Golden Eagles (12-2), and the defense in the second half managed to shut down Nevada's potent pistol attack led by Lampford Mark.
Davis was off most of the night but made it count on the game-winning drive. On third-and-goal, he scrambled right and found Kelvin Bolden for the 4-yard score, capping a seven-play, 68-yard drive. He had just 59 yard passing at halftime and finished 18 of 41 for 165 yards.
On the winning drive, Davis was 3 of 4 for 66 yards, including a 43-yard completion to Dominique Sullivan down the right sideline and a 19-yarder to a crossing William Spight. Sullivan had five catches for 75 yards.
With Davis held in check, the Golden Eagles relied on their defense, stopping Mark on fourth-and-1 at midfield with 3:56 left. Mark had 183 yards rushing for the Wolf Pack (7-6) but was held to just 21 yards in the second half.
Cody Fajardo was 8 of 19 for 60 yards for Nevada. He also was held to just 14 yards rushing on nine carries before being replaced by Tyler Lantrip.
It was the final game for Southern Miss under coach Larry Fedora, who is leaving after four seasons to take over at North Carolina. The Golden Eagles got another big win after capturing their fifth C-USA title by upsetting previously unbeaten Houston 49-28 in the conference championship game. This was the first 10-win season for Southern Miss since 1988.
Nevada tied the game 17-17 late in the third quarter on a 37-yard field goal by Allen Hardison, taking advantage of a miscue by Southern Miss. Lampley waved for a fair catch on a punt and was run into by teammate Alex Smith. The ball bounced off Lampley's left leg and Nevada's Brandon Marshall recovered on the Southern Miss 14, leading to the field goal.
Just as Nevada seemed to take control of the game, Southern Miss scored 10 points in the final 1 1/2 minutes of the first half to take a 17-14 lead into the break.
Mark's 45-yard run gave the Wolf Pack a 14-7 lead with about 5 minutes left in the half, and Nevada took the ball right back on the ensuing kickoff.
Lorenzo Devers returned the kickoff 61 yards and appeared to be heading for a touchdown. After shedding the kicker, Devers was stripped from behind by Khalid Wooten and Thaddeus Brown returned it 16 yards to the Nevada 36.
But the team from Reno gambled and ended up turning it over on downs on its own 45 when Mark was stopped short on fourth-and-1. That led to a 48-yard field goal by Hrappman with 1:21 left in the half.
On the kickoff, Wooten fumbled and Southern Mississippi's Emmanuel Johnson recovered at the Nevada 24. Seven plays later, Davis threw a 2-yard pass to Lampley in the back of the end zone for the go-ahead score. A brief scuffle broke out between some of the players after the catch, but no one was ejected.
With both teams struggling to get going, special teams got the Golden Eagles on the scoreboard from a blocked punt by Tim Green early in the second quarter.
Green burst through the middle and leaped in the air, getting his hand on the ball as he flipped over a blocker. Tray Becton-Martin then dropped on the ball in the end zone, giving the Golden Eagles a 7-0 lead. Tray Becton-Martin is the 25th different player to score for the Golden Eagles this year, which leads the nation.
Nevada answered with a 5-yard touchdown run by Mark, who had a 25-yard scamper to begin the 81-yard drive. Mark had 41 yards rushing on the drive, giving him 112 yards and his sixth-straight game with 100 or more.
Both teams blew good scoring opportunities in the first quarter.
Mark burst up the middle for 43 yards and was chased down from behind by Presley, getting Nevada inside the red zone. But Cody Fajardo's pass on third down was tipped and intercepted in the end zone by Jacorius Cotton.
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP) ? Over the objections of the U.S. Forest Service, wildlife officials in California are taking steps at the state level to protect a rare woodpecker partly because the federal agency won?t stop logging the bird?s ever-shrinking habitat in burned stands of national forests in the Sierra Nevada.
The California State Fish and Game Commission recently voted to add the black-backed woodpecker to the list of species that are candidates for protection under the California Endangered Species Act, launching a year-long status review of the bird that is at the center of an ongoing legal battle in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals over salvage logging in the area where 250 homes burned near Lake Tahoe in 2007.
Commissioner Michael Sutton said he?s satisfied there is a ?substantial possibility? the woodpecker could end up being listed as threatened. He said his support for the move was based in part on correspondence from the Forest Service indicating the agency doesn?t believe the bird needs any protection and that even if it did, USFS wouldn?t be required to provide it.
The Forest Service had designated the black-backed as the indicator species for all fish and wildlife dependent on burned forests across the Sierra, from north of Tahoe to south of Yosemite. It?s the same kind of designation agency biologists gave the northern spotted owl in the 1980s to serve as a barometer of the overall health of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest.
But, said Sutton, it has become clear ?their management policy has changed recently. They now permit, under relevant forest management plans, 100 percent salvage logging of burned areas, which is the preferred habitat of this species.
?That may be fine for the Forest Service,? said Sutton, after moving to add the woodpecker to the state?s list of candidate species on Dec. 15. ?Their mandate is multiple-use, including timber harvest? Our mandate is stewardship of wildlife.?
Commissioner Daniel Richards was the lone dissenter in the 3-1 vote advancing the listing petition by the Phoenix-based Center for Biological Diversity and the Earth Island Institute?s John Muir Project in Cedar Ridge, Calif.
?I do believe it is a rare species, but that doesn?t make it is endangered. It has been rare forever,? Richards said. ?We get these every month. Everybody would like for us to list everything as endangered ... to burden our department with further analysis.?
Chad Hanson, executive director of the John Muir Project, said the action was significant because ?they are acknowledging that not only is there a total lack of protection from clear cutting on private lands, they (the woodpeckers) also don?t have any protections on Forest Service land to fall back on.?
?It?s the first time anybody has acknowledged that a species is impacted by post-fire salvage logging,? added Justine Augustine, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity based in San Francisco. ?They accepted the fact there is substantial evidence there is a problem here and we?re going to have to step in.?
Hanson, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Davis, helped persuade the Forest Service in recent years to designate the black-backed woodpecker the indicator species for all wildlife dependent on burned forests throughout the Sierra and has been citing the agency?s own research for years in his bid to show the bird may already be on its way to extinction.
?Even in burned forests, the black-backed is one of the rarest birds in California,? he said, adding there is ?no dispute its habitat has declined dramatically since the 19th and early 20th century due to fire suppression.?
As a result, such post-fire habitat now comprises less than one-half of 1 percent of the Sierra forests the woodpecker once inhabited, he said.
But Forest Service officials say there is no evidence that the bird?s population itself is actually in a state of decline. While Hanson maintains there may be as few as 1,000 pairs of black-backs left in the Sierras, the agency believes there are many more.
Randall Moore, Pacific Southwest regional boss for the Forest Service based in Vallejo, presented the state commission earlier this year with a 16-page memo questioning the ?degree and immediacy? of the threat to the black-backed from Forest Service practices. He said more information was needed, and that ?management of National Forest System lands is inherently complex given the responsibility to manage public natural resources for a wide variety of often conflicting threats and opportunities.?
Halting or significantly restricting fire suppression activities ? even away from homes ? the memo noted, is ?unlikely to be implementable due to social and political resistance.?
Augustine said it was ?inappropriate, at best? for the Forest Service to imply the state should change its findings to accommodate the Forest Services? ?complex? management. He said the wildlife commission?s decision will help put the spotlight on the service?s new legal stance that even if the bird did warrant added protection, the agency no longer is required to provide it.
The agency was long bound by the National Forest Management Act, which President Reagan signed into law in 1982, which established the so-called ?viability rule.? It stipulated that the Forest Service would attempt to maintain a viable population of all species found on individual forests. But the Forest Service says the rule is super-ceded by the 2007 forest plan amendment, which, still provides general guidelines for protection of fish and wildlife. But, according to the agency?s interpretation, it does not prohibit projects such as salvage logging just because the potential impact to a particular species? habitat could threaten the sustainability of its population on that individual national forest.
Hanson said the change in position represents a ?significant threat of extinction to a number of species in the coming decades. It is an outrageous and dangerous position for the agency to take, and I think it had an impact on the commission?s decision.?
The issue will be front and center in late January or February when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the same two environmental groups? appeal challenging a federal court?s refusal to halt the logging at Lake Tahoe.
The Forest Service maintains it met all the law?s requirements for the Angora fire project, intended to speed restoration of the burned area as well reduce future fire threats over nearly 3,000 acres. The agency said it was made clear in the environmental assessment that its proposed action could reduce potential black-backed woodpecker territories, and that was its ?only project-level analytical duty.??
Given the federal agency?s position, Hanson said, state protection of the bird may be its only hope.
?Basically what the commission did is stand up for the science on this species,? he said. ?I know it doesn?t necessarily mean that they are going to go through with a listing a year from now, but they did the right thing here.?
Had Vin Diesel & Co. not put out Fast Five earlier this year, we may have never heard new Look Mexico songs. Once again taking song titles from quotes in Diesel flicks, these noodly indie rockers (now based in Austin, Texas) explore a few more corners of their sound on the 14-minute, five-track Real Americans Spear It. Opener ?You Hungry? Good. ?Cause You?re Sayin? Grace? is an admirable attempt at Vampire Weekend-esque world pop, only with more effects pedals. ?Arrest? I Don?t Feel Like I?m Under Arrest? is as straightforward a pop song as this band have ever written, with an instantly memorable chorus. ?Running Ain?t Freedom (You Should Know That)? is the best of the bunch, though, with tambourine and piano flourishes perfectly accenting the driving rock song.
In terms of being the most disliked player in the NBA, LeBron James can't keep up with a Kardashian ex-husband.
New Jersey Nets forward Kris Humphries -- also known for his 2 1/2 -month marriage to reality star Kim Kardashian -- beat out James for the dubious distinction, according to a survey conducted by Nielsen and E-Poll Market Research that appeared on Forbes.com.
Humphries took in a 50 percent dislike percentage, topping James' 48 percent.
Players must have a minimum 10 percent public awareness level to have been considered, according to Forbes.com.
Kobe Bryant, Tony Parker, Metta World Peace, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony, Paul Pierce, Dwyane Wade and Lamar Odom completed the top 10.
'Nanoantennas' show promise in optical innovationsPublic release date: 22-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Emil Venere venere@purdue.edu 765-494-4709 Purdue University
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Researchers have shown how arrays of tiny "plasmonic nanoantennas" are able to precisely manipulate light in new ways that could make possible a range of optical innovations such as more powerful microscopes, telecommunications and computers.
The researchers at Purdue University used the nanoantennas to abruptly change a property of light called its phase. Light is transmitted as waves analogous to waves of water, which have high and low points. The phase defines these high and low points of light.
"By abruptly changing the phase we can dramatically modify how light propagates, and that opens up the possibility of many potential applications," said Vladimir Shalaev, scientific director of nanophotonics at Purdue's Birck Nanotechnology Center and a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Findings are described in a paper to be published online Thursday (Dec. 22) in the journal Science.
The new work at Purdue extends findings by researchers led by Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In that work, described in an October Science paper, Harvard researchers modified Snell's law, a long-held formula used to describe how light reflects and refracts, or bends, while passing from one material into another.
"What they pointed out was revolutionary," Shalaev said.
Until now, Snell's law has implied that when light passes from one material to another there are no abrupt phase changes along the interface between the materials. Harvard researchers, however, conducted experiments showing that the phase of light and the propagation direction can be changed dramatically by using new types of structures called metamaterials, which in this case were based on an array of antennas.
The Purdue researchers took the work a step further, creating arrays of nanoantennas and changing the phase and propagation direction of light over a broad range of near-infrared light. The paper was written by doctoral students Xingjie Ni and Naresh K. Emani, principal research scientist Alexander V. Kildishev, assistant professor Alexandra Boltasseva, and Shalaev.
The wavelength size manipulated by the antennas in the Purdue experiment ranges from 1 to 1.9 microns.
"The near infrared, specifically a wavelength of 1.5 microns, is essential for telecommunications," Shalaev said. "Information is transmitted across optical fibers using this wavelength, which makes this innovation potentially practical for advances in telecommunications."
The Harvard researchers predicted how to modify Snell's law and demonstrated the principle at one wavelength.
"We have extended the Harvard team's applications to the near infrared, which is important, and we also showed that it's not a single frequency effect, it's a very broadband effect," Shalaev said. "Having a broadband effect potentially offers a range of technological applications."
The innovation could bring technologies for steering and shaping laser beams for military and communications applications, nanocircuits for computers that use light to process information, and new types of powerful lenses for microscopes.
Critical to the advance is the ability to alter light so that it exhibits "anomalous" behavior: notably, it bends in ways not possible using conventional materials by radically altering its refraction, a process that occurs as electromagnetic waves, including light, bend when passing from one material into another.
Scientists measure this bending of radiation by its "index of refraction." Refraction causes the bent-stick-in-water effect, which occurs when a stick placed in a glass of water appears bent when viewed from the outside. Each material has its own refraction index, which describes how much light will bend in that particular material. All natural materials, such as glass, air and water, have positive refractive indices.
However, the nanoantenna arrays can cause light to bend in a wide range of angles including negative angles of refraction.
"Importantly, such dramatic deviation from the conventional Snell's law governing reflection and refraction occurs when light passes through structures that are actually much thinner than the width of the light's wavelengths, which is not possible using natural materials," Shalaev said. "Also, not only the bending effect, refraction, but also the reflection of light can be dramatically modified by the antenna arrays on the interface, as the experiments showed."
The nanoantennas are V-shaped structures made of gold and formed on top of a silicon layer. They are an example of metamaterials, which typically include so-called plasmonic structures that conduct clouds of electrons called plasmons. The antennas themselves have a width of 40 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, and researchers have demonstrated they are able to transmit light through an ultrathin "plasmonic nanoantenna layer" about 50 times smaller than the wavelength of light it is transmitting.
"This ultrathin layer of plasmonic nanoantennas makes the phase of light change strongly and abruptly, causing light to change its propagation direction, as required by the momentum conservation for light passing through the interface between materials," Shalaev said.
###
The work has been funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation's Division of Materials Research.
Related website:
Vladimir Shalaev: http://www.ece.purdue.edu/~shalaev
The image in the upper left shows a schematic for an array of gold "plasmonic nanoantennas" able to precisely manipulate light in new ways, a technology that could make possible a range of optical innovations such as more powerful microscopes, telecommunications and computers. At upper right is a scanning electron microscope image of the structures. The figure below shows the experimentally measured refraction angle versus incidence angle for light, demonstrating how the nanoantennas alter the refraction. (Purdue University Birck Nanotechnology Center image)
A publication-quality image is available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/2011/shalaev-nanoantenna.jpg
Abstract on the research in this release can be found at: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2011/111222ShalaevNanoantenna.html
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'Nanoantennas' show promise in optical innovationsPublic release date: 22-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Emil Venere venere@purdue.edu 765-494-4709 Purdue University
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Researchers have shown how arrays of tiny "plasmonic nanoantennas" are able to precisely manipulate light in new ways that could make possible a range of optical innovations such as more powerful microscopes, telecommunications and computers.
The researchers at Purdue University used the nanoantennas to abruptly change a property of light called its phase. Light is transmitted as waves analogous to waves of water, which have high and low points. The phase defines these high and low points of light.
"By abruptly changing the phase we can dramatically modify how light propagates, and that opens up the possibility of many potential applications," said Vladimir Shalaev, scientific director of nanophotonics at Purdue's Birck Nanotechnology Center and a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Findings are described in a paper to be published online Thursday (Dec. 22) in the journal Science.
The new work at Purdue extends findings by researchers led by Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In that work, described in an October Science paper, Harvard researchers modified Snell's law, a long-held formula used to describe how light reflects and refracts, or bends, while passing from one material into another.
"What they pointed out was revolutionary," Shalaev said.
Until now, Snell's law has implied that when light passes from one material to another there are no abrupt phase changes along the interface between the materials. Harvard researchers, however, conducted experiments showing that the phase of light and the propagation direction can be changed dramatically by using new types of structures called metamaterials, which in this case were based on an array of antennas.
The Purdue researchers took the work a step further, creating arrays of nanoantennas and changing the phase and propagation direction of light over a broad range of near-infrared light. The paper was written by doctoral students Xingjie Ni and Naresh K. Emani, principal research scientist Alexander V. Kildishev, assistant professor Alexandra Boltasseva, and Shalaev.
The wavelength size manipulated by the antennas in the Purdue experiment ranges from 1 to 1.9 microns.
"The near infrared, specifically a wavelength of 1.5 microns, is essential for telecommunications," Shalaev said. "Information is transmitted across optical fibers using this wavelength, which makes this innovation potentially practical for advances in telecommunications."
The Harvard researchers predicted how to modify Snell's law and demonstrated the principle at one wavelength.
"We have extended the Harvard team's applications to the near infrared, which is important, and we also showed that it's not a single frequency effect, it's a very broadband effect," Shalaev said. "Having a broadband effect potentially offers a range of technological applications."
The innovation could bring technologies for steering and shaping laser beams for military and communications applications, nanocircuits for computers that use light to process information, and new types of powerful lenses for microscopes.
Critical to the advance is the ability to alter light so that it exhibits "anomalous" behavior: notably, it bends in ways not possible using conventional materials by radically altering its refraction, a process that occurs as electromagnetic waves, including light, bend when passing from one material into another.
Scientists measure this bending of radiation by its "index of refraction." Refraction causes the bent-stick-in-water effect, which occurs when a stick placed in a glass of water appears bent when viewed from the outside. Each material has its own refraction index, which describes how much light will bend in that particular material. All natural materials, such as glass, air and water, have positive refractive indices.
However, the nanoantenna arrays can cause light to bend in a wide range of angles including negative angles of refraction.
"Importantly, such dramatic deviation from the conventional Snell's law governing reflection and refraction occurs when light passes through structures that are actually much thinner than the width of the light's wavelengths, which is not possible using natural materials," Shalaev said. "Also, not only the bending effect, refraction, but also the reflection of light can be dramatically modified by the antenna arrays on the interface, as the experiments showed."
The nanoantennas are V-shaped structures made of gold and formed on top of a silicon layer. They are an example of metamaterials, which typically include so-called plasmonic structures that conduct clouds of electrons called plasmons. The antennas themselves have a width of 40 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, and researchers have demonstrated they are able to transmit light through an ultrathin "plasmonic nanoantenna layer" about 50 times smaller than the wavelength of light it is transmitting.
"This ultrathin layer of plasmonic nanoantennas makes the phase of light change strongly and abruptly, causing light to change its propagation direction, as required by the momentum conservation for light passing through the interface between materials," Shalaev said.
###
The work has been funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation's Division of Materials Research.
Related website:
Vladimir Shalaev: http://www.ece.purdue.edu/~shalaev
The image in the upper left shows a schematic for an array of gold "plasmonic nanoantennas" able to precisely manipulate light in new ways, a technology that could make possible a range of optical innovations such as more powerful microscopes, telecommunications and computers. At upper right is a scanning electron microscope image of the structures. The figure below shows the experimentally measured refraction angle versus incidence angle for light, demonstrating how the nanoantennas alter the refraction. (Purdue University Birck Nanotechnology Center image)
A publication-quality image is available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/2011/shalaev-nanoantenna.jpg
Abstract on the research in this release can be found at: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2011/111222ShalaevNanoantenna.html
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Social media users had no shortage of things to discuss in 2011 as big news -- good or bad -- got even bigger online. Hot topics that revolved around major tech companies or products such as Netflix, Xbox 360 or Kindle Fire incited a flurry of online reactions.
[More from Mashable: 6 Crazy Tech Predictions for 2012]
In the infographic below, Klout lists the most-buzzed about companies, tech products, locations, people and music genres of the year, and many of the topics are in line with what got Mashable readers fired up.
"When people talked about these topics, they got tons of RTs, @mentions, shares, comments, likes and more," Klout?s marketing manager Megan Berry told Mashable Thursday. "These are the topics their audiences loved to discuss, share, and, in some cases, hate."
[More from Mashable: Amazon, Apple and Google Offer Discounted Albums as Low as $4.99]
For example, Apple secured five of the 11 spots on tech products list, with the iPhone leading the charge.
But why does looking at these hot topics matter? "As social media increasingly shapes and reflects the prevailing opinions on brands and events, it's more important than ever to understand what people want to share and why for everyone from brands to individuals," Berry explains.
SEE ALSO: Facebook Reveals 2011?s Most-Popular Status Trends | YouTube's Top Videos of 2011
Klout, which measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Foursquare on a scale of 0 to 100, has made a major push this year to highlight (with new features) and pinpoint (by adding more popular social networks to its scoring model) the topics individual users are experts on. In September, Klout unveiled Topic Pages that let users gain insights on top influencers and +K recipients for specific content areas. This month, Klout unwrapped sashes, a visual update to that Topics feature. Despite those efforts, some critics say Klout is flawed partly because some users try to game its system, or because its scoring model doesn't take into account the offline influence of experts who also have online presences but don't create much content.
Which topics are you surprised to see make or be excluded from Klout's infographic? Chime in.
LONDON ? Royal officials say Prince Harry showed up at a London police station to help a friend who had been mugged.
Harry's Clarence House office says the 27-year-old prince went to support a friend who was reporting a robbery.
British media say Thomas van Straubenzee was robbed in a south London street while on the phone with Harry, who raced across the city to help. When he could not find Van Straubenzee, Harry went to the local police station, where he gave a witness statement.
Police said a mobile phone was recovered after the Nov. 30 robbery. A suspect has been arrested and bailed.
Harry, an army helicopter pilot, recently returned from a two-month training exercise in the United States.
FILE - In this Sept. 11, 2011 file photo, Mike Love of the Beach Boys sings for a crowd of thousands during the Colorado Remembers 911 event at Civic Center Park in Denver. The founding members of the classic rock group; Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine, announced Friday, Dec. 16, they were getting back together to celebrate their 50th anniversary. (AP Photo/Barry Gutierrez, file)
FILE - In this Sept. 11, 2011 file photo, Mike Love of the Beach Boys sings for a crowd of thousands during the Colorado Remembers 911 event at Civic Center Park in Denver. The founding members of the classic rock group; Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine, announced Friday, Dec. 16, they were getting back together to celebrate their 50th anniversary. (AP Photo/Barry Gutierrez, file)
NEW YORK (AP) ? It's almost winter, but get ready for some surf and sun: The Beach Boys are reuniting.
The founding members of the classic rock group ? Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine ? announced Friday they are getting back together to celebrate their 50th anniversary. They're working on a new album and also plan a 50-date tour that will take them around the world.
"This anniversary is special to me because I miss the boys, and it will be a thrill for me to make a new record and be on stage with them again," Wilson said in a statement.
The group also includes Bruce Johnston and David Marks, both of whom have been with the band for decades.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers gave birth to the California rock sound. Back then, the band members were Love, Jardine, Wilson and his two brothers ? Carl and Dennis Wilson, who have since died. With songs like "Good Vibrations," ''I Get Around" and "California Girls," the quintet embodied the fantasy of West Coast beach life. Their albums, particularly "Pet Sounds," influenced rockers of their generation and beyond.
But Wilson suffered mental problems that caused him to withdraw from the band, and there were years of animosity between Love and Wilson, who are cousins, as well as lawsuits among members of the band. Still, they have gotten back together over the years, including for their 40th anniversary in the last decade.
Love remarked in the statement Friday on how he and Wilson were getting along well, sharing compliments together in the studio.
"Music has been the unifying and harmonizing fact of life in our family since childhood," he said.?"It has been a huge blessing that we have been able to share with the world." Referring to a Beach Boy hit, he added: "Wouldn't It Be Nice to Do It Again??Absolutely!"
The group was supposed to announce their reunion as a surprise during the Recording Academy's live nominations special for the Grammys last month, but those plans fell through.
However, Jardine said the group planned to appear at the Feb. 12 Grammy telecast in Los Angeles.
"There will be a surprise at the Grammys," he told Rolling Stone. "We will do something really exciting. There's a lot of interest in it, which is nice. It's going to be a very big operation."
The Beach Boys first concert is scheduled for April 27 at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Wedbush Securities has raised the price target on Allot Communications (NASDAQ: ALLT) from $17 to $20 and maintains its Outperform.
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SANTA MONICA, Calif. ? Atheist messages have displaced most of the Christmastime nativity scenes that for nearly six decades a coalition of local churches had placed in Santa Monica's ocean-view park.
Local churches have traditionally claimed 14 of the 21 Palisades Park display spaces to illustrate the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. But atheists managed to get all but three of the spaces this year because of a new city lottery system.
The Santa Monica Daily Press ( http://bit.ly/tr8h1T) reported that churches had little or no competition for the spaces during the past 57 years. This year, 13 people bid for spaces, prompting City Hall to use a random lottery system to allot the spots.
Two individuals snagged 18 spaces. One person can request a maximum of nine spaces.
"Our belief is that these new applicants have been working together to displace and push out the nativity scenes from the park, rather than erecting a full display of their own," said Hunter Jameson, a spokesman for a coalition of the city's churches.
Secularist Damon Vix is behind the anti-Christian crusade.
Last year, he put up a sign quoting Thomas Jefferson: "Religions are all alike ? founded on fables and mythologies." There were also selections on U.S. Supreme Court decisions about the importance of separating church and state.
Vix, who doesn't live in Santa Monica, now helps other atheists populate Palisades Park spaces, including American Atheists Inc. and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Secularists feel a need to be more vocal and express their civil rights, he said.
"For 60 years, it's almost exclusively been the point of view of Christians putting up nativity scenes for a whole city block," Vix said.
Jameson pushed the city to give "local preference" in awarding the spaces.
City Attorney Marsha Moutrie wrote, however, that the Christmastime displays cross the boundary into First Amendment rights, which know no geographical boundaries.
"Everyone has equal rights to use the streets and parks for expressive activities, irrespective of residency," Moutrie wrote.
___
Information from: Santa Monica Daily Press , http://www.smdp.com/
FILE - In this Sept. 12, 2011 file photo, TV personality Giuliana Rancic attends the Rachel Zoe Spring 2012 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York. Six weeks after revealing that she has breast cancer, E! News host Giuliana Rancic, 37, announced Monday, Dec. 5, 2011, on NBC's ?Today? show that she will have a double mastectomy. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, file)
FILE - In this Sept. 12, 2011 file photo, TV personality Giuliana Rancic attends the Rachel Zoe Spring 2012 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York. Six weeks after revealing that she has breast cancer, E! News host Giuliana Rancic, 37, announced Monday, Dec. 5, 2011, on NBC's ?Today? show that she will have a double mastectomy. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, file)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Six weeks after revealing she has breast cancer, E! News host Giuliana Rancic says she will have a double mastectomy. The 37-year-old made the announcement Monday on NBC's "Today" show.
"It was not an easy decision but it was the best decision for me," she said.
She plans to have the surgery next week and said she hopes to be recovered by New Year's Eve, when she and husband Bill Rancic are planning to be in Times Square.
Rancic said she received an "overwhelming outpouring of love, prayers and support" after announcing her breast cancer diagnosis in October.
"I want to make sure to thank everyone and give them an update for being so kind and loving and supportive," she said Monday.
E! expressed its support for Rancic in a statement Monday.
"Giuliana's strength continues to amaze us," the network said. "We admire her courage and are proud to stand by her side through every step on her path to full recovery."
COMMENTARY | BlackBerry manufacturer RIM hasn't quite crossed the threshold set by HP's $99 fire sale of its TouchPad tablet. But its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet dropped to the $199 mark on the weekend of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and has been the subject of numerous promotions aimed at businesses, such as a buy-two-get-one-free offer.
In a December 2 press release, RIM announced that it was writing off $485 million in unsold PlayBooks for the third quarter of 2012, an amount that Morgan Stanley analyst Ehud Gelblum estimates amounts to about 1.4 million tablets. The question is, where did RIM go wrong with the PlayBook?
Mixed marketing messages
"Amateur hour is over," the PlayBook's early ads announced, in an obvious jab at the iPad ... and all others besides "The world's first professional-grade tablet." But if its "Amplified BlackBerry Experience" didn't win over corporate customers, many of which are now investigating internal iPad deployments, its widely-touted ability to play Need for Speed at the same time as HD movies didn't impress the IT department either. Meanwhile, its enterprise features like BlackBerry messaging were lost on the crowd at Best Buy.
Lack of unique features
Besides a seeming confusion over whether it was targeting businesses or home users, the PlayBook's inability to set itself apart from other tablets didn't help matters either. It promised Adobe Flash web browsing, but so did every Android tablet; and it offered "True Multitasking," but for some reason that never captured people's attention.
The PlayBook's most distinctive feature was actually an anti-feature: Its inability to access your email, calendar, and contacts without being connected to a BlackBerry smartphone. RIM has promised to solve this in a February update, but that will leave almost a year that it will have been on the market without them.
Lack of quality apps and content
App developers like Jamie Murai were turned off by RIM's requirements for PlayBook developers, including a convoluted process to install the necessary tools and a notarized proof of identity that had to be physically mailed to RIM. Partly because of this, the PlayBook suffered from a dearth of apps.
Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble were able to achieve success in the tablet market by selling half-sized e-readers, each tied to their online bookstores and to services like Netflix. But with few big-name content partnerships, the PlayBook was all dressed up with nothing to read or watch.
The PlayBook isn't the iPad
The iPad continues to not only define the tablet category, but break its own records in sales. Any tablet that isn't the iPad has an uphill battle to fight to gain traction ... the BlackBerry PlayBook included.
MOSCOW (Reuters) ? Russians voted on Sunday in a parliamentary election seen as a test of Vladimir Putin's personal authority before his planned return to the presidency, and an electoral watchdog complained of 'massive cyber attacks' on a website alleging violations.
Putin remains by far the most popular politician in the vast country of more than 140 million people but there are some signs Russians may be wearying of his cultivated strong-man image after 12 years in power.
The 59-year-old ex-spy looked stern and said only that he hoped for good results for his ruling United Russia party as he walked past supporters to vote in Moscow.
"I will vote for Putin. Everything he gets involved in, he manages well," said Father Vasily, 61, a white-bearded monk from a nearby monastery. "It's too early for a new generation. They will be in charge another 20 years. We are Russians, we are Asians, we need a strong leadership."
A Western-financed electoral watchdog and two liberal media outlets said their sites had been shut down by hackers intent on silencing allegations of violations. Sites belonging to the Ekho Moskvy radio station, online news portal Slon.ru and the watchdog Golos went down at around 8 a.m.
"Massive cyber attacks are taking place on the sites of Golos and the map showing violations," Golos said on Twitter.
"I believe that nobody but government structures and the FSB (Security service) is capable of conducting such a campaign," Golos executive director Liliya Shibanova told reporters.
Golos said it had been excluded from several polling booths in the Siberian region of Tomsk. Moscow prosecutors launched an investigation last week into Golos' activities after lawmakers objected to its Western financing.
On Saturday, customs officers held Golos's director for 12 hours at a Moscow airport and Washington said on Friday it was concerned by "a pattern of harassment" against the watchdog.
Ekho Moskvy editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov wrote on Twitter: "It is obvious the election day attack on the (radio) site is part of an attempt to prevent publishing information about violations."
President Dmitry Medvedev, who is stepping aside next year so that Putin can return to the presidency, has dismissed talk of electoral fraud. The general prosecutor's office and the Central Election Commission could be reached for comment.
SOME RUSSIANS WEARY OF PUTIN
Opinion polls before the vote put Putin's party on course to win a majority but less than the 315 seats it now has in the 450-seat lower house of parliament, the State Duma.
If Putin's party gets less than two-thirds of seats, it would be stripped of its so called constitutional majority which allows it to change the constitution and even approve the impeachment of the president.
Some voters said they would vote for Just Russia, which calls itself 'new socialist', or the Communists, who retain support largely among poorer citizens 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and the advent of a free-market system.
"United Russia has lost touch with reality," said a 30-year-old history teacher in St Petersburg who gave his name only as Alexander. He was planning to switch his vote to the Communists.
Others in Russia's second city said they would vote for liberal, Western-leaning Yabloko but the biggest liberal opposition group was barred from taking part.
One of its co-leaders, former First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, put a big X across the ballot paper and wrote: "Give us back our elections, vermin."
About 30 opposition protesters gathered by the Kremlin screaming: "Your elections are a farce!" through loudspeakers. Twelve were detained by police, Reuters witnesses said.
Witnesses said police also detained at least 20 people after more than 200 gathered in St Petersburg to protest against election fraud, whistling and chanting: "Shameful Elections!"
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, voting at a cultural centre decked out with Soviet-style hammer and sickle flags, said there appeared to be election violations in several parts of the country spanning 9,000 km (5,600 miles).
"I just spoke to our people in Siberia and the Far East and the situation is very worrying," he said.
PUTIN'S PARTY
Supporters say Putin saved Russia during his 2000-2008 presidency, restoring Kremlin control over sprawling regions and reviving an economy mired in post-Soviet chaos.
His use of military force to crush a rebellion in the southern Muslim region of Chechnya also won him broad support, and security was tight there on election day.
Opposition parties say the election was unfair from the start because of authorities' support for United Russia with cash and television air time.
Putin has no serious personal rivals as Russia's leader. He remains the ultimate arbiter between the clans which control the world's biggest energy producer.
But his party has had to fight against opponents who have branded it a collection of "swindlers and thieves" and combat a growing sense of unease among voters at Putin's grip on power.
"I shall not vote. I shall cross out all the parties on the list and write: 'Down with the party of swindlers and thieves,'" said Nikolai Markovtsev, an independent deputy in the Vladivostok city legislature on the Pacific seaboard.
"These are not elections: this is sacrilege," he said.
Opponents say Putin has crafted a brittle political system which excludes independent voices and that Russians are growing tired of Putin's swaggering image.
Putin is almost certain to win the March 4 presidential election and could extend his rule until 2024 if he wins the maximum two more terms.
But sports fans booed and whistled at Putin at a Moscow martial arts fight last month -- an exceptional event in a country inclined to show respect and restraint towards leaders. ($1 = 30.8947 Russian roubles)
(Writing by Ralph Boulton, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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Public release date: 22-Dec-2011
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